I Love Living In San Diego

by Chaplain Paul L. Slater

Advantages of Living In San Diego

There are many advantages for living in San Diego, California. Great weather, booming economy, job opportunities, and being a destination city. Booming economy? Maybe then, but today is a different story.

So that means that a key advantage of living in San Diego is that conferences of all kinds come here. There is not need to wonder why so many of these national trade shows and conventions come to San Diego in the winter.

Explore Opportunities Within The Convention And Trade Show World

One of my goals this year is to explore opportunities within the convention and trade show world.

I did recently attend a national healthcare convention and was amazed at the number of people attending. I was told it was one of the smaller medical healthcare conventions. The big ones are held at the San Diego Convention Center.

While attending the hospice healthcare event, the thought crossed my mind as to whether there are any Convention Center and Trade Show Chaplains.

Ministry Opportunities Outside The Local Church

Once again, as a professional chaplain, I must check in with my endorsing faith group. As a professional chaplain, we are required to be endorsed by a faith group.

For me, that is the Church of the Nazarene. (Our geographical regions of ministry are called districts and San Diego is in the Southern California District of the Church of the Nazarene.)

And once again I experience what most healthcare chaplains, attending their annual church conference, experience. I feel like I am on the outside looking in.

Sometimes, if there is time, they may even give those whose parish is the world, a brief moment to share what God is doing in our chaplaincy ministry.

And for a brief moment I am considered to be on the inside of my faith group. But then, returning to a ministry assignment that is outside a local church, I return to the edges of my chaplaincy endorsing church.

Reflections from A Previous Article On Chaplaincy

A year ago I wrote about the challenge of serving in a ministry setting outside the local church. Here is what I said then.

Of course feeling like I am on the outside edges is a common problem most chaplains feel in relationship to their endorsing faith group. Most of the chaplains I know feel this way.

As I reflect on why this is, I have several ideas begging to be heard.

Chaplaincy Is Outside The Local Church

First of all, most church bodies focus on local churches and ministries those churches promote. Chaplaincy is outside the local church, a ministry fulfilled in hospitals, jails and prisons, homes for abused and molested children, or, in my case as a hospice chaplain, in skilled nursing facilities and homes.

I personally feel estranged from my church and to be honest, confused. Because I am where they say they want to be — ministering to the broken hearted, the imprisoned, the ill, the dying.

Yet local churches focus on what takes place within the four walls of their buildings, which, for the most part, is how most churches define “church”. Most usage of that word will be to describe their building, not their people, but then that’s another pet peeve of mine.

I Am A Maverick And Mavericks Stray

But I must confess my part of the blame for feeling estranged from my church. You see, I am an entrepreneur. The truth is, I do tend to be independent.

And I like change and new ideas. I confess that I am a maverick and mavericks stray from the herd. In my opinion, just like Apostle Paul in the New Testament.

I have a ministry out where the spiritual action is

Yet as I listen to the reports of local church pastors (1 minute video interviews), and as I engage in personal conversation with them, I am so glad to be where I am, out where the spiritual action is.

As a chaplain, I touch more lives with God’s love in a week than most pastor’s do in a year! And with this website, very much a ministry to me as well as a business venture, that number of lives touched could, in a short time more, be more than my 30 year career as a pastor.

And what I like about my chaplaincy ministry is that I don’t have to answer to a local church board! That alone should cause many pastors to seek out how to become a chaplain!

So if I feel estranged, so be it. The rewards of chaplaincy far outweigh those feelings of estrangement from my church. That is why I was focusing on the trade center, national convention world. I see great opportunities to impact a population local churches cannot reach.

The truth be told, I like living and working outside the local church.